Batman

The cop is under no more of an obligation to suffer insult or provocation than you or I. Laws against battery help define legal limits to interpersonal behavior. In a civilized society if you want your rights (and your person) to be respected you generally have to respect the rights of others. Blowing bubbles isn't the crime of the century but she was standing close and facing him. FWIW, when people complain about behavior like this from cops in western countries like Canada and such, I wonder how they would feel if they had police contact in most of the rest of the world.

Do you actually think that driving down the street with a parabolic mic and recording people’s conversations is a legitimate thing to do? And does the claim that you’re doing it as part of a “population density study” somehow justify it? As opposed to doing it, say, for the purpose of collecting personal information? Most people don’t know how vulnerable they are when they use computers, the internet, Wi-Fi and so on. I’m old fashioned, I know, but I don’t think that means that exploiting their vulnerability is justified. You may be more sophisticated when it comes to using computers than most but there are still a great many people who are more sophisticated than you when it comes to law, finance, real estate and lots of other stuff. I bet you don’t enjoy it when they pull a fast one on you. I am not going to form a conclusion about this yet but, I think that the technicians working on Google’s behalf were probably aware of what they were receiving with their antennas, what was being recorded on their hard drives and what they were downloading to Google’s servers when they were done. If Google’s defense is something like “we made a mistake” and you buy that, well, what can I say but 'more power to you'.

Robocop, anyone?